Neil Armstrong: First Man on the Moon Neil Armstrong: First Man on the Moon By SPACE.com Staff | August 25, 2013 05:28am ET MORE Neil Armstrong sits in the lunar module after a historic moonwalk. Credit: NASA Neil A. Armstrong was a NASA astronaut and the first man on the moon or, more accurately, the first man to set foot on the moon. He was also an accomplished test pilot and a figure so large in American and world history that you can bet many generations from now people will still be talking about him, as well as his moon landing. Editor's Note: Neil Armstrong died on Aug. 25, 2012. He was 82. One year after his death, NASA recalled the iconic astronaut's legacy in a video tribute. The Truth About Neil Armstrong (Op-Ed) Here are some frequently asked questions about him: Who was Neil Armstrong? He is best known as being the first man to step on the moon (fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin arrived at the moon at the same time, but was the second man to actually set foot on the lunar surface).

Since Armstrong was the mission’s pilot, it’s also said that he was the first person to land a craft on the moon. Where was Neil Armstrong from? He was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, on Aug. 5, 1930. His parents were Stephen Koenig Armstrong and Viola Louise Engel. What mission did Armstrong fly to the moon? Apollo 11 was the name of the first manned lunar landing mission. When was the first moon landing? Apollo 11 touched down on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. That was more than eight years after President John F. Kennedy gave his historic speech in which he said, “First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” Who was the first person in space? Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth on April 12, 1961, giving the Soviet Union a big victory in its Cold War space race against the United States.

[ Giant Leaps: Top Milestones of Human Spaceflight ] NASA test pilot Neil Armstrong is seen here next to the X-15 ship #1 after a research flight. Credit: NASA Other facts in the history of Armstrong’s career: Armstrong was a naval aviator from 1949 to 1952. He served in the Korean War. Well before he made spaceflight history, Armstrong got a bachelor of science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Purdue University in 1955 (later, he received a master of science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1970.) As a NASA test pilot , Armstrong flew the X-15, a rocket-powered, missile-shaped aircraft that tested the limits of high-altitude flight. He flew more than 200 different aircraft, from jets to gliders and even helicopters. Armstrong was the pilot of the Gemini 8 mission, launched March 16, 1966. He performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space (Gemini 8 docked with a previously launched Agena rocket). After his time as an astronaut, Armstrong was Deputy Associate Administrator for Aeronautics at NASA Headquarters.

From 1971-1979, he was Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. From 1982-1992, Armstrong was chairman of Computing Technologies for Aviation, Inc., Charlottesville, Va. Armstrong largely avoided the public spotlight after his astronaut days. But he remained a vocal supporter of suborbital spaceflight . On the other hand, the former Apollo astronaut was publicly critical of plans to shift the crew-carrying burden in spaceflight from NASA to private spaceships. Related: Armstrong walks on moon - Jul 20, 1969 - HISTORY.com Armstrong walks on moon Publisher A+E Networks At 10:56 p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks these words to more than a billion people listening at home: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon. The American effort to send astronauts to the moon has its origins in a famous appeal President John F.

Kennedy made to a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.” At the time, the United States was still trailing the Soviet Union in space developments, and Cold War-era America welcomed Kennedy’s bold proposal. In 1966, after five years of work by an international team of scientists and engineers, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted the first unmanned Apollo mission, testing the structural integrity of the proposed launch vehicle and spacecraft combination. Then, on January 27, 1967, tragedy struck at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, when a fire broke out during a manned launch-pad test of the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rocket. Three astronauts were killed in the fire. Despite the setback, NASA and its thousands of employees forged ahead, and in October 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, orbited Earth and successfully tested many of the sophisticated systems needed to conduct a moon journey and landing.

In December of the same year, Apollo 8 took three astronauts to the dark side of the moon and back, and in March 1969 Apollo 9 tested the lunar module for the first time while in Earth orbit. Then in May, the three astronauts of Apollo 10 took the first complete Apollo spacecraft around the moon in a dry run for the scheduled July landing mission. At 9:32 a.m. on July 16, with the world watching, Apollo 11 took off from Kennedy Space Center with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin Jr., and Michael Collins aboard. Armstrong, a 38-year-old civilian research pilot, was the commander of the mission. After traveling 240,000 miles in 76 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19. The next day, at 1:46 p.m., the lunar module Eagle, manned by Armstrong and Aldrin, separated from the command module, where Collins remained. Two hours later, the Eagle began its descent to the lunar surface, and at 4:18 p.m. the craft touched down on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility.

Armstrong immediately radioed to Mission Control in Houston, Texas, a famous message: “The Eagle has landed.” At 10:39 p.m., five hours ahead of the original schedule, Armstrong opened the hatch of the lunar module. As he made his way down the lunar module’s ladder, a television camera attached to the craft recorded his progress and beamed the signal back to Earth, where hundreds of millions watched in great anticipation. At 10:56 p.m., Armstrong spoke his famous quote, which he later contended was slightly garbled by his microphone and meant to be “that’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” He then planted his left foot on the gray, powdery surface, took a cautious step forward, and humanity had walked on the moon. “Buzz” Aldrin joined him on the moon’s surface at 11:11 p.m., and together they took photographs of the terrain, planted a U.S. flag, ran a few simple scientific tests, and spoke with President Richard M. Nixon via Houston. By 1:11 a.m. on July 21, both astronauts were back in the lunar module and the hatch was closed.

The two men slept that night on the surface of the moon, and at 1:54 p.m. the Eagle began its ascent back to the command module. Among the items left on the surface of the moon was a plaque that read: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon–July 1969 A.D–We came in peace for all mankind.” At 5:35 p.m., Armstrong and Aldrin successfully docked and rejoined Collins, and at 12:56 a.m. on July 22 Apollo 11 began its journey home, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean at 12:51 p.m. on July 24. There would be five more successful lunar landing missions, and one unplanned lunar swing-by, Apollo 13. The last men to walk on the moon, astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt of the Apollo 17 mission, left the lunar surface on December 14, 1972.

The Apollo program was a costly and labor intensive endeavor, involving an estimated 400,000 engineers, technicians, and scientists, and costing $24 billion (close to $100 billion in today’s dollars). The expense was justified by Kennedy’s 1961 mandate to beat the Soviets to the moon, and after the feat was accomplished ongoing missions lost their viability. Related Videos NASA - The First Person on the Moon The First Person on the Moon 01.16.08 Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin flew on the Apollo 11 mission. Image Credit: NASA It was 1961. John F. Kennedy was the president of the United States. He wanted to land humans on the moon. The United States had just started trying to put people in space. Was NASA ready to go to the moon? The president and NASA knew they could do it. They were ready to put people on the moon. Apollo 11's mission was to land two men on the moon. They also had to come back to Earth safely. Apollo 11 blasted off on July 16, 1969.

Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins were the astronauts on Apollo 11. Four days later, Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon. They landed on the moon in the Lunar Module. It was called the Eagle. Collins stayed in orbit around the moon. He did experiments and took pictures. The sign the astronauts left on the moon says, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind." Image Credit: NASA On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to step on the moon. He and Aldrin walked around for three hours. They did experiments. They picked up bits of moon dirt and rocks. They put a U.S. flag on the moon. They also left a sign on the moon. The two astronauts returned to orbit, joining Collins. On July 24, 1969, all three astronauts came back to Earth safely. President Kennedy's wish came true. It took less than 10 years. Humans had walked on the moon.

Men Walk On Moon <p/> Voice From Moon: 'Eagle Has Landed' Voyage To The Moon: By Archibald MacLeish Houston, Monday, July 21--Men have landed and walked on the moon. Two Americans, astronauts of Apollo 11, steered their fragile four-legged lunar module safely and smoothly to the historic landing yesterday at 4:17:40 P.M., Eastern daylight time. Neil A. Armstrong, the 38-year-old civilian commander, radioed to earth and the mission control room here: "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." The first men to reach the moon--Mr. Armstrong and his co-pilot, Col. Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. of the Air Force--brought their ship to rest on a level, rock-strewn plain near the southwestern shore of the arid Sea of Tranquility. About six and a half hours later, Mr.

Armstrong opened the landing craft's hatch, stepped slowly down the ladder and declared as he planted the first human footprint on the lunar crust: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." His first step on the moon came at 10:56:20 P.M., as a television camera outside the craft transmitted his every move to an awed and excited audience of hundreds of millions of people on earth. Tentative Steps Test Soil Mr. Armstrong's initial steps were tentative tests of the lunar soil's firmness and of his ability to move about easily in his bulky white spacesuit and backpacks and under the influence of lunar gravity, which is one-sixth that of the earth. "The surface is fine and powdery," the astronaut reported. "I can pick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers like powdered charcoal to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch. But I can see the footprints of my boots in the treads in the fine sandy particles. After 19 minutes of Mr. Armstrong's testing, Colonel Aldrin joined him outside the craft.

The two men got busy setting up another television camera out from the lunar module, planting an American flag into the ground, scooping up soil and rock samples, deploying scientific experiments and hopping and loping about in a demonstration of their lunar agility. They found walking and working on the moon less taxing than had been forecast. Mr. Armstrong once reported he was "very comfortable." And people back on earth found the black-and-white television pictures of the bug- shaped lunar module and the men tramping about it so sharp and clear as to seem unreal, more like a toy and toy-like figures than human beings on the most daring and far- reaching expedition thus far undertaken. Nixon Telephones Congratulations During one break in the astronauts' work, President Nixon congratulated them from the White House in what, he said, "certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made." "Because of what you have done," the President told the astronauts, "the heavens have become a part of man's world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility it required us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to earth.

"For one priceless moment in the whole history of man all the people on this earth are truly one--one in their pride in what you have done and one in our prayers that you will return safely to earth." Mr. Armstrong replied: "Thank you Mr. President. It's a great honor and privilege for us to be here representing not only the United States but men of peace of all nations, men with interests and a curiosity and men with a vision for the future." Mr. Armstrong and Colonel Aldrin returned to their landing craft and closed the hatch at 1:12 A.M., 2 hours 21 minutes after opening the hatch on the moon. While the third member of the crew, Lieut. Col. Michael Collins of the Air Force, kept his orbital vigil overhead in the command ship, the two moon explorers settled down to sleep. Outside their vehicle the astronauts had found a bleak world. It was just before dawn, with the sun low over the eastern horizon behind them and the chill of the long lunar nights still clinging to the boulders, small craters and hills before them. Colonel Aldrin said that he could see "literally thousands of small craters" and a low hill out in the distance.

But most of all he was impressed initially by the "variety of shapes, angularities, granularities" of the rocks and soil where the landing craft, code-named Eagle had set down. The landing was made four miles west of the aiming point, but well within the designated area. An apparent error in some data fed into the craft's guidance computer from the earth was said to have accounted for the discrepancy. Suddenly the astronauts were startled to see that the computer was guiding them toward a possibly disastrous touchdown in a boulder-filled crater about the size of a football field. Mr. Armstrong grabbed manual control of the vehicle and guided it safely over the crater to a smoother spot, the rocket engine stirring a cloud of moon dust during the final seconds of descent. Soon after the landing, upon checking and finding the spacecraft in good condition, Mr. Armstrong and Colonel Aldrin made their decision to open the hatch and get out earlier than originally scheduled. The flight plan had called for the moon walk to begin at 2:12 A.M. Flight controllers here said that the early moon walk would not mean that the astronauts would also leave the moon earlier. The lift-off is scheduled to come at about 1:55 P.M. today.

Their departure from the landing craft out onto the surface was delayed for a time when they had trouble depressurizing the cabin so that they could open the hatch. All the oxygen in the cabin had to be vented. Once the pressure gauge finally dropped to zero, they opened the hatch and Mr. Armstrong stepped out on the small porch at the top of the nine-step ladder. "O.K., Houston, I'm on the porch," he reported, as he descended. On the second step from the top, he pulled a lanyard that released a fold-down equipment compartment on the side of the lunar module. This deployed the television camera that transmitted the dramatic pictures of man's first steps on the moon. Ancient Dream Fulfilled It was man's first landing on another world, the realization of centuries of dreams, the fulfillment of a decade of striving, a triumph of modern technology and personal courage, the most dramatic demonstration of what man can do if he applies his mind and resources with single-minded determination. The moon, long the symbol of the impossible and the inaccessible, was now within man's reach, the first port of call in this new age of spacefaring. Immediately after the landing, Dr. Thomas O.

Paine, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, telephoned President Nixon in Washington to report: "Mr. President, it is my honor on behalf of the entire NASA team to report to you that the Eagle has landed on the Sea of Tranquility and our astronauts are safe and looking forward to starting the exploration of the moon." The landing craft from the Apollo 11 spaceship was scheduled to remain on the moon about 22 hours, while Colonel Collins of the Air Force, the third member of the Apollo 11 crew, piloted the command ship, Columbia, in orbit overhead. "You're looking good in every respect," Mission Control told the two men of Eagle after examining data indicating that the module should be able to remain on the moon the full 22 hours. Mr. Armstrong and Colonel Aldrin planned to sleep after the moon walk and then make their preparations for the lift-off for the return to a rendezvous with Colonel Collins in the command ship. Apollo 11's journey into history began last Wednesday from launching pad 39-A at Cape Kennedy, Fla. After an almost flawless three-day flight, the joined command ship and lunar module swept into an orbit of the moon yesterday afternoon.

The three men were awake for their big day at 7 A.M. when their spacecraft emerged from behind the moon on its 10th revolution, moving from east to west across the face of the moon along its equator. Their orbit was 73.6 miles by 64 miles in altitude, their speed 3,660 miles an hour. At that altitude and speed, it took about two hours to complete a full orbit of the moon. The sun was rising over their landing site on the Sea of Tranquility. "We can pick out almost all of the features we've identified previously," Mr. Armstrong reported. After breakfast, on their 11th revolution Colonel Aldrin and then Mr. Armstrong, both dressed in their white pressurized suits, crawled through the connecting tunnel into the lunar module. They turned on the electrical power, checked all the switch settings on the cockpit panel and checked communications with the command ship and the ground controllers. Everything was "nominal," as the spacemen say. LM Ready for Descent The lunar module was ready.

Its four legs with yard-wide footpads were extended so that the height of the 16-ton vehicle now measured 22 feet and 11 inches and its width 31 feet. Mr. Armstrong stood at the left side of the cockpit, and Colonel Aldrin at the right. Both were loosely restrained by harnesses. They had closed the hatch to the connecting tunnel. The walls of their craft were finely milled aluminum foil. If anything happened so that it could not return to the command ship, the lunar module would be too delicate to withstand a plunge through earth's atmosphere, even if it had the rocket power. Nearly three-fourths of the vehicle's weight was in propellants for the descent and ascent rockets--Aerozine 50 and nitrogen oxide, which substituted for the oxygen, making combustion possible. It was an ungainly craft that creaked and groaned in flight. But years of development and testing had determined that it was the lightest and most practical way to get two men to the moon's surface.

Before Apollo 11 disappeared behind the moon near the end of its 12th orbit, mission control gave the astronauts their "go" for undocking--the separation of Eagle from Columbia. Colonel Collins had already released 12 of the latches holding the two ships together at the connecting tunnel. He did this when he closed the hatch at the command ship's nose. While behind the moon, he was to flip a switch on the control panel to release the three remaining latches by a spring action. At 1:50 P.M., when communications signals were reacquired, Mission Control asked: "How does it look?" "Eagle has wings," Mr. Armstrong replied. The two ships were then only a few feet apart. But at 2:12 P.M., Colonel Collins fired the command ship's maneuvering rockets to move about two miles away and in a slightly different orbit from the lunar module. "It looks like you've got a fine-looking flying machine there, Eagle, despite the fact you're upside down," Colonel Collins commented, watching the spidery lunar module receding in the distance. "Somebody's upside down," Mr. Armstrong replied.

What is "up" and what is "down" is never quite clear in the absence of landmarks and the sensation of gravity's pull. As Mr. Armstrong and Colonel Aldrin rode the lunar module back around to the moon's far side, the rocket engine in the vehicle's lower stage was pointed toward the line of flight. The two pilots were leaning toward the cockpit controls, riding backwards and facing downward. "Everything is 'go,'" they were assured by Mission Control. Their on-board guidance and navigation computer was instructed to trigger a 29.8-second firing of the descent rocket, the 9,870-pound-thrust throttable engine that would slow down the lunar module and send it toward the moon on a long, curving trajectory. The firing was set to take place at 3:08 P.M., when the craft would be behind the moon and once again out of touch with the ground. Suspense built up in the control room here. Flight controllers stood silently at their consoles. Among those waiting for word of the rocket firing were Dr. Thomas O. Paine, the space agency's administrator, most of the Apollo project officials and several astronauts.

At 3:46 P.M., contact was established with the command ship. Colonel Collins reported, "Listen, baby, things are going just swimmingly, just beautiful." There was still no word from the lunar module for two minutes. Then came a weak signal, some static and whistling, and finally the calm voice of Mr. Armstrong. "The burn was on time," the Apollo 11 commander declared. When he read out data on the beginning of the descent, Mission Control concluded that it "look great." The lunar module had already descended from an altitude of 65.5 miles to 21 miles and was coasting steadily downward. Eugene F. Kranz, the flight director, turned to his associates and said, "We're off to a good start. Play it cool." Colonel Aldrin reported some oscillations in the vehicle's antenna, but nothing serious. Several times the astronauts were told to turn the vehicle slightly to move the antenna into a better position for communications over the 230,000 miles.

"You're 'go' for PDI," radioed Mission Control, referring to the powered descent initiation--the beginning of the nearly 13-minute final blast of the rocket to the soft touchdown. When the two men reached an altitude of 50,000 feet, which was approximately the lowest point reached by Apollo 10 in May, green lights on the computer display keyboard in the cockpit blinked the number 99. This signaled Mr. Armstrong that he had five seconds to decide whether to go ahead for the landing or continue on its orbital path back to the command ship. He pressed the "proceed" button. The throttleable engine built up thrust gradually, firing continuously as the lunar module descended along the steadily steepening trajectory to the landing site about 250 miles away: "Looking good," Mission Control radioed the men. Four minutes after the firing the lunar module was down to 40,000 feet. After five and a half minutes, it was 33,500 feet. At six minutes, 27,000 feet. "Better than the simulator," said Colonel Aldrin, referring to their practice landings at the spacecraft center.

Seven minutes after the firing, the men were 21,000 feet above the surface and still moving forward toward the landing site. The guidance computer was driving the rocket engine. The lunar module was slowing down. At an altitude of about 7,200 feet, with the landing site still about five miles ahead, the computer commanded control jets to fire and tilt the bug-shaped craft almost upright so that its triangular windows pointed forward. Mr. Armstrong and Colonel Aldrin then got their first close-up view of the plain they were aiming for. It was then about three and a half minutes to touchdown. The brownish-gray panorama rushed below them--myriad craters hills and ridges, deep cracks and ancient rubble on the moon, which Dr. Robert Jastrow, the space agency scientist, called the "Rosetta Stone of life." "You're 'go' for landing," Mission Control informed the two men. The Eagle closed in, dropping about 20 feet a second, until it was hovering almost directly over the landing area at an altitude of 500 feet. Its floor was littered with boulders. It was when the craft reached an altitude of 300 feet that Mr.

Armstrong took over semimanual control for the rest of the way. The computer continued to have control of the rocket firing, but the astronaut could adjust the craft's hovering position. He was expected to take over such control anyway, but the sight of a crater looming ahead at the touchdown point made it imperative. As Mr. Armstrong said later, "The auto-targeting was taking us right into a football field- sized crater, with a large number of big boulders and rocks." For about 90 seconds, he peered through the window in search of a clear touchdown point. Using the lever at his right hand, he tilted the vehicle forward to redirect the firing of the maneuvering jets and thus shift its hovering position. Finally, Mr. Armstrong found the spot he liked, and the blue light on the cockpit flashed to indicate that five-foot-long probes, like curb feelers, on three of the four legs had touched the surface. "Contact light," Mr. Armstrong radioed. He pressed a button marked "Stop" and reported, "okay, engine stop." There were a few more cryptic messages of functions performed. Then Maj. Charles M.

Duke, the capsule communicator in the control room, radioed to the two astronauts: "We copy you down, Eagle." "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." "Roger, Tranquility," Major Duke replied. "We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We are breathing again. Thanks a lot." Colonel Aldrin assured Mission Control it was a "very smooth touchdown." The Eagle came to rest at an angle of only about four and a half degrees. The angle could have been more than 30 degrees without threatening to tip the vehicle over. The landing site, about 120 miles southwest of the crater Maskelyne, is on the right side of the moon as seen from earth. The position: Lat. 0.799 degrees N., Long. 23.46 degrees E. Although Mr. Armstrong is known as a man of few words, his heartbeats told of his excitement upon leading man's first landing on the moon. At the time of the descent rocket ignition, his heartbeat rate registered 110 a minute--77 is normal for him--and it shot up to 156 at touchdown.

At the time of the landing, Colonel Collins was riding the command ship Columbia about 65 miles overhead. Mission control informed the colonel, "Eagle is at Tranquility. "Yea, I heard the whole thing," Colonel Collins, the man who went so far but not all the way, replied. "Fantastic." When the Apollo astronauts landed on the Sea of Tranquility, the temperature at their touchdown site was about zero degrees Fahrenheit in the sunlight, even colder in the shade. During a lunar night, which lasts 14 earth days, temperatures plunge as low as 280 degrees below zero. Unlike earth, the moon, having no atmosphere to act as a blanket, is unable to retain any of the day's warmth during the night. During the equally long lunar day, temperatures rise as high as 280 degrees. By the time of Eagle's departure from the moon, with the sun higher in the sky, the temperatures there will have risen to about 90 degrees. This particular landing site was one of five selected by Apollo project officials after analysis of pictures returned by the five Lunar Orbiter unmanned spacecraft. All five sites are situated across the lunar equator on the side of the moon always facing earth.

Being on the equator reduces the maneuvering for the astronauts to get there. Being on the near side of the moon, of course, makes it possible to communicate with the explorers. How Neil Armstrong Became the First Man on the Moon Updated August 29, 2016. Who Was the First Man on the Moon? For thousands of years, man had looked to the heavens and dreamed of walking on the moon. On July 20, 1969, as part of the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong became the very first to accomplish that dream, followed only minutes later by Buzz Aldrin . Their accomplishment placed the United States ahead of the Soviets in the Space Race and gave people around the world the hope of future space exploration. Also Known As: First Moon Landing, First Man to Walk on the Moon Crew Aboard Apollo 11: Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, Michael Collins Overview of the First Man on the Moon: When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, the United States was surprised to find themselves behind in the race to space. Still behind the Soviets in the Space Race four years later, President John F.

Kennedy gave inspiration and hope to the American people in his speech to Congress on May 25, 1961 in which he stated, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth." continue reading below our video The Apollo 11 Moon Landing Just eight years later, the United States accomplished this goal by placing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. Take Off! At 9:32 a.m. on July 16, 1969, the Saturn V rocket launched Apollo 11 into the sky from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On the ground there were over 3,000 journalists, 7,000 dignitaries, and approximately a half million tourists watching this momentous occasion. The event went smoothly and as scheduled. After one-and-a-half orbits around Earth, the Saturn V thrusters flared once again and the crew had to manage the delicate process of attaching the lunar module (nicknamed Eagle) onto the nose of the joined command and service module (nicknamed Columbia).

Once attached, Apollo 11 left the Saturn V rockets behind as they began their three-day journey to the moon, called the translunar coast. A Difficult Landing On July 19, at 1:28 p.m. EDT, Apollo 11 entered the moon's orbit. After spending a full day in lunar orbit, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin boarded the lunar module and detached it from the command module for their descent to the moon's surface. As the Eagle departed, Michael Collins, who remained in the Columbia while Armstrong and Aldrin were on the moon, checked for any visual problems with the lunar module. He saw none and told the Eagle crew, "You cats take it easy on the lunar surface." As the Eagle headed toward the moon's surface, several different warning alarms were activated. Armstrong and Aldrin realized that the computer system was guiding them to a landing area that was strewn with boulders the size of small cars. With some last-minute maneuvers, Armstrong guided the lunar module to a safe landing area. At 4:17 p.m.

EDT on July 20, 1969, the landing module landed on the moon's surface in the Sea of Tranquility with only seconds of fuel left. Armstrong reported to the command center in Houston, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Houston responded, "Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again." Walking on the Moon After the excitement, exertion, and drama of the lunar landing, Armstrong and Aldrin spent the next six-and-a-half hours resting and then preparing themselves for their moon walk. At 10:28 p.m. EDT, Armstrong turned on the video cameras. These cameras transmitted images from the moon to over half a billion people on Earth who sat watching their televisions. It was phenomenal that these people were able to witness the amazing events that were unfolding hundreds of thousands of miles above them. Neil Armstrong was the first person out of the lunar module. He climbed down a ladder and then became the first person to set foot on the moon at 10:56 p.m. EDT.

Armstrong then stated, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." A few minutes later, Aldrin exited the lunar module and stepped foot on the moon's surface. Working on the Surface Although Armstrong and Aldrin got a chance to admire the tranquil, desolate beauty of the moon's surface, they also had a lot of work to do. NASA had sent the astronauts with a number of scientific experiments to set up and the men were to collect samples from the area around their landing site. They returned with 46 pounds of moon rocks. Armstrong and Aldrin also set up a flag of the United States. While on the moon, the astronauts received a call from President Richard Nixon . Nixon began by saying, "Hello, Neil and Buzz. I am talking to you by telephone from the Oval Office of the White House. And this certainly has to be the most historic telephone calls ever made. I just can't tell you how proud we are of what you have done." Time to Leave After spending 21 hours and 36 minutes upon the moon (including 2 hours and 31 minutes of outside exploration), it was time for Armstrong and Aldrin to leave.

To lighten their load, the two men threw out some excess materials like backpacks, moon boots, urine bags, and a camera. These fell to the moon's surface and were to remain there. Also left behind was a plaque which read, "Here men from the planet earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind." The lunar module blasted off from the moon's surface at 1:54 p.m. EDT on July 21, 1969. Everything went well and the Eagle re-docked with the Columbia. After transferring all of their samples onto the Columbia, the Eagle was set adrift in the moon's orbit. The Columbia, with all three astronauts back on board, then began their three-day journey back to Earth. Splash Down Before the Columbia command module entered the Earth's atmosphere, it separated itself from the service module. When the capsule reached 24,000 feet, three parachutes deployed to slow down the Columbia's descent. At 12:50 p.m. EDT on July 24, the Columbia safely landed in the Pacific Ocean , southwest of Hawaii.

They landed just 13 nautical miles from the U.S.S. Hornet that was scheduled to pick them up. Once picked up, the three astronauts were immediately placed into quarantine for fears of possible moon germs. Three days after being retrieved, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were transferred to a quarantine facility in Houston for further observation. On August 10, 1969, 17 days after splash down, the three astronauts were released from quarantine and able to return to their families. The astronauts were treated like heroes on their return. They were met by President Nixon and given ticker-tape parades. These men had accomplished what men had only dared to dream for thousands of years - to walk on the moon. First Moon Landing 1969 - YouTube First Moon Landing 1969 Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

Uploaded on Feb 10, 2006 The video of the very first moon landing of the apollo 11 mission in 1969! Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon with his now legenday words "One small step for man, a giant leap for mankind." This is a truly amazing video and it was in 1969!!! If you think about it, you have orders of magnitude more processing power in your mobile phone than they did in the whole space craft!! Incredible! Category The First Moonwalk | NASA: Challenging the Space Frontier | Scholastic.com How would you feel if you were the first person to walk on the moon? What might your first words be? Neil Armstrong takes the first step onto the moon. (NASA) Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planting an American flag on the moon's surface. (NASA) Aldrin posing for a photo. (NASA) The First Moonwalk It is 9:30 p.m. Houston time on July 20, 1969. Armstrong and Aldrin put on their bulky moon suits and prepare to take the first steps on the moon.

Armstrong is the first to wriggle out of a square hole in the Eagle. Once outside, he lowers a small drawbridge that holds a TV camera. Now the world can watch as he backs down the ladder. Back on the home planet, 600 million people watch on television. Armstrong touches the moon's surface and says, "That's one small step for man one giant leap for mankind." Aldrin climbs out next. "Beautiful! Beautiful!" he says. "Magnificent desolation." He and Armstrong struggle to plant an American flag on the moon's surface. They get it standing, barely, and take pictures. President Nixon calls and congratulates them. Finally, they gather 50 pounds of rocks and set up experiments. After about two hours, Aldrin and Armstrong crawl back into the Eagle. Both men have now been awake for 22 straight hours. They are supposed to rest before the complicated rendezvous with Collins, who is circling the moon every two hours. But they can't. There is little heat in the paper-thin LM, and they shiver with cold. After less than a day on the lunar surface, it is time to go.

Using its one small engine, the top part of the Eagle rises up. Dust blows everywhere. "I looked up long enough to see the flag fall over," Aldrin recalls. Armstrong and Aldrin rendezvous with Collins in the Command Module. Once all three astronauts are back onboard Columbia, they release the Eagle. It falls away and crashes on the moon. Columbia then heads back towards Earth. Apollo 11: First Men on the Moon Apollo 11: First Men on the Moon By Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor | July 25, 2012 03:39pm ET MORE Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin Aldrin photographed this iconic photo, a view of his footprint in the lunar soil, as part of an experiment to study the nature of lunar dust and the effects of pressure on the surface during the historic first manned moon landing in July 1969. Credit: NASA The historic launch of the Apollo 11 mission carried three astronauts toward the moon. Two of them would set foot on the lunar surface for the first time in human history as millions of people around the world followed their steps on television. The astronauts The crew of Apollo 11 were all experienced astronauts.

All three had flown missions into space before. Cmdr. Neil Armstrong , 38, had previously piloted Gemini 8, the first time two vehicles docked in space. Born Aug. 5, 1930, in Ohio, Armstrong was 38 when he became the first civilian to command two American space missions. Apollo 11 crew: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. Credit: NASA Col. Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin , 39, was the first astronaut with a doctorate to fly in space. Born Jan. 20, 1930, in New Jersey, Aldrin piloted Gemini 12, taking a two-hour, twenty-minute walk in space to demonstrate that an astronaut could work efficiently outside of the vehicle. For Apollo 11, he served as the lunar module pilot. The command module pilot, Lt. Col. Michael Collins, 38, was born in Italy on Oct. 31, 1930. The pilot of Gemini 10, Collins spent almost an hour and a half outside of the craft on a space-walk and became the first person to meet another spacecraft in orbit.

From Earth to the moon Mission planners at NASA studied the lunar surface for two years, searching for the best place to make the historic landing. Using high-resolution photographs taken by the Lunar Orbiter satellite and close-up photographs taken by the Surveyor spacecraft, they narrowed the initial thirty sites down to three. Influencing factors included the number of craters and boulders, few high cliffs or hills, and a relatively flat surface. The amount of sunlight was also a factor in determining the best time to land on the lunar surface. Apollo 11 launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:32 a.m. EDT on July 16, 1969. While in flight, the crew made two televised broadcasts from the interior of the ship, and a third transmission as they drew closer to the moon, revealing the lunar surface and the intended approach path. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin entered the lunar module, nicknamed the "Eagle" and separated from the Command Service Module — the "Columbia" — headed toward the lunar surface. Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin poses with the American flag on the surface of the moon in July 1969.

Credit: NASA The lunar module touched down on the moon's Sea of Tranquility , a large basaltic region, at 4:17 p.m. EDT. Armstrong notified Houston with the historic words, "Houston, this is Tranquility Base. The Eagle has landed." For the first two hours, Armstrong and Aldrin checked all of the systems, configured the lunar module for the stay on the moon, and ate. They decided to skip the scheduled four-hour rest to explore the surface. A camera in the Eagle provided live coverage as Armstrong descended down a ladder at 11:56 p.m. on July 20, 1969, and uttered the words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Aldrin followed twenty minutes later, with Armstrong recording his descent. Armstrong had the responsibility to document the landing, so most of the images taken from the Apollo 11 mission were of Aldrin. [Images: NASA's Historic Apollo 11 Moon Landing in Pictures ] While on the surface, the astronauts set up several experiments, collected samples of lunar soil and rock to bring home, erected a United States flag, and took core samples from the crust.

They spoke with U.S. President Richard Nixon, whose voice was transmitted from the White House, and placed a plaque that stated: HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND Memorial medallions with the names of the three astronauts who perished in the Apollo 1 fire and two cosmonauts who were also deceased, including the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin , remained after the astronauts left, as did a one-and-a-half-inch silicon disk with goodwill messages from 73 countries, and as the names of congressional and NASA leaders. Armstrong spent a little over two and a half hours outside of the Eagle. The astronauts traveled a total distance of about 3,300 feet (1 kilometer) as they walked around, traveling as far as 200 feet (60 meters) from the module to visit a large crater. They collected 47.51 pounds (21.55 kilograms) of samples from the moon, and reported that mobility on the moon was easier than anticipated.

Apollo 11 astronauts, still in their quarantine van, are greeted by their wives upon arrival at Ellington Air Force Base on July 27, 1969. Credit: NASA At 1:54 p.m. EDT, having spent a total of 21 and a half hours on the moon , the lunar module blasted back to where Collins sat in the Columbia. The two vehicles docked, and the crew and samples transferred to the Command Service Module before the Eagle was jettisoned into space. The astronauts headed back home. The team splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 12:50 p.m. EDT on July 24, only a few miles from the recovery ship, the U.S.S. Hornet. After donning biological isolation garments, the crew left the Columbia and climbed into a rubber boat, where they were rubbed down with iodine in an effort to stem potential contamination. They traveled by helicopter to a Mobile Quarantine Facility aboard the ship before being taken to Houston. They remained quarantine until Aug. 10, having completed the national goal set by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, to perform a crewed lunar landing and return to Earth.

This is part of a SPACE.com series of articles on the Greatest Moments in Flight, the breakthrough events that paved the way for human spaceflight and its next steps: asteroid mining and bases on the moon and Mars. Related: The man who fell to earth: Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon | Science | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close Buzz Aldrin has been on many journeys in his remarkable life, and in some respects the one to the moon was the least challenging. Being the second man to walk on the moon in July 1969, stepping down from the landing craft 20 minutes after Neil Armstrong, gave him eternal name recognition, but it also brought a heap of problems in the decade that followed - alcoholism, depression, two divorces. He was on the moon for two and a half hours; his post-Nasa breakdown lasted for a decade as he looked for something to fill the space left by ... space.

But now, praise the Lord and Alcoholics Anonymous, 79-year-old Buzz is sitting in front of me, tanned, alert, as sharp as the Apollo 11 badge pinned to his colourful tie, chiding me for waving the mic around carelessly, telling a fan who is showing him his grandfather's 60s space scrapbook that he doesn't sign autographs, treading the careful divide between ego and generosity, self-regard and fellowship that is essence-of-Buzz. Armstrong lives in near-seclusion at his Ohio farm, so Buzz - off the booze for 30 years - has come to represent the crazy glory of manned space travel, and is in London as part of a global mission to get us interested in space again. He's also flogging a book, Magnificent Desolation, which charts his rise, fall and return to equilibrium. Major Tom eventually made it back to Earth, and has quite a tale to tell. The key thing when interviewing Aldrin is not to get too technical. He is a man who would happily fill the entire hour with a discussion of docking manoeuvres.

I also make the mistake of mentioning God - he secretly took communion moments after the module landed on the moon ("My soul didn't belong to Nasa," he says) - and he gives me an impenetrable 10-minute explanation of the evolution of his faith. He is nothing if not systematic, which is great for the meticulous planning of moon landings, less good for quick life surveys. But get him off technicalities and AA-style moral lessons, and he is far more articulate and engaging than most interviewers would have you believe. He has always had problems putting into words the grandeur of that moment 40 years ago. "People want to know what it felt like," he says. "They want us in a few words to generate the enthusiasm that the world had as they contemplated what we were about to do. Well, what it felt like is something that we trained for. We were trying to treat it as calmly as we could and perform to the best of our ability. We tried to repress feelings of exuberance, of disappointment, and be proud and responsible people accomplishing the task that was given to us. That sounds kind of boring.

Except that what we did was kind of earth-shaking." I ask him whether he was disappointed to be the second person to set foot on the moon. He tries to have it both ways. "We're dealing with very competitive people who always want to get the most out of the opportunities that come along, even though I did not relish the idea of speeches, celebrations and being on a pedestal as a hero. I didn't enter the space programme to want to do that. Being first outside the spacecraft would bring much more responsibility, and I really wasn't looking for that." I press a little, and you can sense the 40 years of frustration at being labelled second. "I was continually being asked, 'Didn't it bother you?', and always being introduced as the second man on the moon. That is a degrading title right off the bat, instead of being a member of the first landing mission to reach the moon." What comes across most strongly in his description of the mission in the book is its black comedy - and the way that he, Armstrong and Michael Collins, who was orbiting the moon in the command module, really were flying on a wing and a prayer.

Aldrin worries that he will close the hatch to the landing craft, locking out him and Armstrong and condemning them to a slow, oxygen-starved death; he frets when he finds it difficult to plant the American flag in the dusty lunar soil and imagines half a billion viewers laughing at his public humiliation; and he has to use a felt-tip pen as a circuit breaker when a switch breaks in the module. "We were human beings carrying out a very demanding task," he says. "We had to improvise." That was the appeal of the Apollo missions: these crop-haired thirty-somethings dicing with death going somewhere no one else had been. Aldrin sees his role now as reactivating that spirit. He reckons we should go back to the moon, this time to develop it, and look to get to Mars in a couple of decades. "We have to take the new generation with us, so they can say that their generation participated." He'll try anything to reach that new generation: he writes children's books, is using Twitter (or Tweeter, as he calls it), and recently recorded a rap record called Rocket Experience with Snoop Dogg - one huge step for a man of a certain age.

Aldrin holds nothing back when talking about how bad things were when he fell to earth in the early 70s. He rejoined the US air force - he had been a fighter pilot - but his role as commander of a test pilot school didn't work out, he quit the armed services at 42, started drinking, had an affair, suffered depression, his marriage broke up, he went through another brief marriage, and eventually found himself selling Cadillacs (or, rather, not selling - he was a terrible salesman) in Beverly Hills and becoming dependent on drink. He outlines the reasons for his collapse in his somewhat convoluted Buzz-ese, but it's a perceptive self-analysis: "I inherited tendencies in different directions [depression and an addictive personality] and those directions, if you feed them with a life of perfection and discipline and then remove that all of a sudden, it's probably going to go back to some of the more deep-seated concerns about self-worth and achievement. You did that as part of a team; what are you doing now? You get a job as a car salesman and you're a horrible car salesman.

What does that do to a person's ego." What he did was to get sober, marry again - this time for keeps - and re-engage with space. It's no accident that Buzz Lightyear, the space ranger in animated film Toy Story, is named after Aldrin, who shares his limitless enthusiasm for exploration. Lucky, though, that Aldrin abandoned his real name, Edwin, preferring the nickname given by one of his two sisters, who said "buzzer" instead of "brother". Edwin Aldrin would just have been the second guy on the moon; Buzz Aldrin is the ur-spaceman, if not quite declaring, "To infinity and beyond", convinced that eventually we can get pretty close. • Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon (Bloomsbury, £16.99). Buzz Aldrin will be speaking tonight, 7.30pm, at the London Literature Festival, Royal Festival Hall, London SE1 Whatever happened to Neil Armstrong? Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, is intensely private and, in the eyes of the media, unforgivably normal. He is the JD Salinger of space exploration: the super-celebrity who shuns publicity.

Having uttered the immortal line, "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind," he hasn't felt the need to say anything significant since. It was thought that Buzz Aldrin, as pilot of the lunar module, would be first out, but according to James Hansen's biography of Armstrong, existing practice was overturned because Nasa chiefs realised the first man on the moon would have to bear the burden of fame for a lifetime and preferred the undemonstrative, ego-free Armstrong. He retired from Nasa in 1971 to become professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati, where he remained until 1979. Since then he has held numerous corporate directorships and, uncharacteristically, appeared in an ad campaign for Chrysler (reportedly to help the ailing firm, rather than for the cash). He lives with his second wife on a farm in southern Ohio, suspicious of fans and autograph hunters since discovering in 2005 that his barber had sold some of his hair to a collector for $3,000.

In a speech to Congress on 25 May 1961, President Kennedy sets the goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade Published: 1 Jul 2009 Forty years on from the first moon landing, we take you on a tour of the technical achievements, the cultural impact and the future of lunar exploration with our guest, Apollo 11's biggest fan, Christopher Riley Published: 5 Jul 2009 Footage shot just weeks before the moon landing shows Armstrong and Aldrin training in their cumbersome spacesuits Published: 2 Jul 2009 John Harris talks to Edgar Mitchell, Gene Cernan, and other alumni of the Apollo space missions Published: 1 Jul 2009

Question: What was the name of the first man to walk on the moon?
Answer: Neil Armstrong